Editorials
Anatomy of a Scare: The Terrifying Scene from Netflix’s ‘Marianne’ We Can’t Stop Thinking About
One of the scariest titles haunting Netflix’s streaming library isn’t a movie, but a French TV series that was canceled after one season. Before Cobweb, director Samuel Bodin delivered pure nightmare fuel with the ultra-creepy French series Marianne.
Marianne followed successful author Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois) as she’s forced to return home to confront her past when the witch that haunts her books and nightmares begins terrorizing her waking life. For the duration of Emma’s writing career, the eponymous witch Marianne enjoyed finding her way to new victims through the books’ pages. With that avenue closed, she physically manifests in Emma’s life to demand the writer continue telling her malevolent exploits. Bodin ensured straight away that the viewer understood just how menacing and utterly frightening this evil witch could be with seriously unnerving scares. Of all the memorable, spine-tingling jolts and goosebumps-inducing moments of dread, there’s one unforgettable scare in episode two that stands above the rest. We can’t get it out of our heads.
In the streaming age of binge TV, series are often designed for easy consumption; one long narrative arc with its chapters broken down into digestible chunks that seamlessly blend into the next. Like comedy, though, horror requires timing precision. It’s tricky enough to craft scares and unsettling atmosphere in a feature-length film, and even trickier in a roughly six-hour series. Meaning horror series are rarely ever scary. Yet, Bodin made it look so effortless. Even more impressive is that he used the binge format as a weapon.
The first five minutes of episode two, “Tradition,” deliver one of the most chilling scares in recent memory. On its own, the episode’s opening scare is enough to warrant sleeping with a night light. It’s rendered even more stunning by the way Boden uses the heightened climax of the previous episode to keep the momentum hurling forward, ramping up the tension to unbearable levels.
The premiere, “Your Dreams,” wastes no time establishing many of the key players, the setup, and the creepy world of Marianne. The oft-unlikable Emma has dragged her beleaguered assistant Camile (Lucie Boujenah) with her on her journey back home. After a series of awkward and flat-out bizarre encounters with the locals, including off-putting Mrs. Daugeron (Mireille Herbstmeyer), the pair wind up at Emma’s parents’ house on the outskirts of town. There’s bad blood between Emma and, well, everyone, making poor Camile all the more uncomfortable in her stay. “Your Dreams” closes with Camile’s unexpected encounter with Emma’s parents in the middle of the night. The final ten minutes end on a thrilling note, leaving your adrenaline soaring.
Camile gets up to go to the restroom, which proves disorienting in such a massive, dimly lit house. She quickly finds she’s not the only one awake– Emma’s parents are wandering the place nude and in a hypnotic daze. Emma’s father attacks Camile, then both parents wander into the woods, setting off the alarm and finally waking Emma. The screen goes black, and the credits kick in just as it delivers a jump scare; Emma’s knocked unconscious by her father. A straightforward yet unsettling scene, heightened by the tension and blaring alarm sirens.
When the second episode begins, you’d think it’d jump ahead to Emma regaining consciousness, giving the viewer room to catch their breath. It doesn’t. Instead, it refocuses back to Camile, now alone in the sprawling home and badly shaken. She works up the nerve to head downstairs, calling out for Emma over the wailing alarm, and notices the back door is wide open. That’s when the alarm stops and the phone rings. Poor Camile makes her way down a dark corridor to answer the phone. Shadows reach for her, and the mise en scène shows just how vulnerable Camile is out in the open; her back is almost always facing dark, empty spaces where something is likely lurking, waiting to strike. When she answers the phone, the rep on the other line from the alarm company should alleviate some of the tension… but it doesn’t.
That reassuring voice attempts to calm Camile before instructing her to close and lock that back door. She does. Then it tells her to look behind her. The house alarm may have ceased its wails, but her inner alarm spikes. The rep’s voice distorts and changes into Mrs. Daugeron’s. She’s there, waiting in the corner for Camile to see her. Her eyes transform, the music spikes, and terror crescendos until Emma shatters the suspense by pounding on the back door.
Bodin draws out one long sequence over the final moments of the first episode into the opening of the next, without reprieve. It’s a series of scares at varying levels of fear. The strange, unnatural behavior of Emma’s parents disorients, exacerbating Camile’s fish-out-of-water anxieties. The parents move in a trancelike state, but give way to sudden bursts of unpredictable aggression. It further keeps us on edge. The setting, full of wide-open yet darkened spaces, is akin to being a small fish in a black sea of circling predators. The evil is closing in, but it’s not entirely clear from where it will strike.
Offering a safety net only to rip it away is a tried and true scare tactic, and Bodin utilizes it well here by dangling comfort in front of Camile in the form of a friendly, authoritative voice on the phone. The meticulous pacing of this scene and Camile’s movements draw out the tension to near panic-inducing levels.
It’s also interesting to note that the entire sequence is centered around Camile, the meek outsider. Straightaway, Emma is presented as an assertive, domineering personality, and one of her favorite hobbies is strong-arming her mild-mannered assistant. This seemingly endless layering of scares begins with Camile waking up in the middle of the night, venturing cautiously out into the strange place she finds herself. It ends when Emma reappears at the back door, finally giving both her and us a chance to calm our increased heart rate.
Bodin stretches out the horror for fifteen minutes, and that’s hardly the only scare that he employs in Marianne. The eight-episode series may have ended too early, but Bodin packs it full of potent spine-chilling terror that makes it perfect for perennial Halloween watches or those simply seeking a good scare.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article was originally published on June 8, 2020.
College kids, strippers and vampires—those were Donald P. Borchers’ only requirements when he approached Richard Wenk about writing and directing a movie for New World Pictures. As requested, Wenk cooked up Vamp (1986), a tailor-made blend of the decade’s teen movie craze as well as its horror boom.
Grim and earnest stories were still very much a part of the ’80s horror landscape, yet Vamp is something of a comedy. One difference between it and, say, Saturday the 14th, though, is the former avoids using schtick. Wenk’s movie proves that horror comedies also don’t have to subtract thrills from their recipes. Of course, it takes a minute before reaching that point; college antics and culture shocks preface this one macabre misadventure.
Vamp‘s initial setup is apt for a typical college-set, sex-driven comedy; to bribe their way into a fraternity house, two pledges (Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler) go looking for some adult entertainment. Without wasting time on any further exposition, the characters embark on an all-in-one-night trip that quickly detours into terror.
To procure their elusive MacGuffin—a stripper willing to gyrate for some frat boys—Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler), plus a third wheel named Duncan (Gedee Watanabe), trade the safety of their remote college campus for the seediness of some unnamed city. The setting is recognizably L.A. by day, but as soon as night falls, downtown, along with the characters, slips into a kind of surreal universe. Director of photography Elliot Davis gave this early entry on his prolific résumé an unusual yet distinctive look; that Mario Bava-esque, magenta-green lighting is omnipresent, so much so that it’s almost its own character.
Chris Makepeace and Robert Rusler in Vamp
The faint comparisons to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours are merited, although not just because of Vamp’s distinguishing nighttime aesthetic. Save for the primary characters, the supporting roles in Wenk’s movie are also quite colorful and transactional in their behavior. The difference here, though, is the additional urge to ruin Keith and his friends at every turn. Some of that harm is humorous and tolerable enough, whereas the moment Vamp dishes out its first fatality, it’s abundantly clear how this movie qualifies as horror.
Vamp falls into that category of horror movie that reveals its genre with a scream rather than a series of whispers. The opening scene can function as a hint of what lies ahead—things are not at all what they appear to be—but otherwise, Wenk is more than happy to hold off on the horror. When that time does come, though, it catches the viewer off guard. In addition to the pure shock value is that sudden decision to upend the movie’s foremost feature. Or so it would seem.
If afraid of major spoilage, those new to Vamp would be wise to stop reading here. There’s just no skirting around the fact that the central fellowship in this buddy movie hits a serious snag when AJ is killed. That development causes the story to become more of a “long, bad night” journey for Keith and his romantic interest. So while Wenk scores points for subverting expectations, there is also a touch of sadness in his decision. Because if Vamp does anything well, it’s making the characters likable.
Something that comes easily to Vamp—and other teen horror movies from this same era—is its ability to invent young characters worth caring about, or at the very least, are interesting and not so immediately off-putting. More impressive is how Wenk did all this without actually fleshing out those characters. Still and all, Keith and his kind are a grade above cookie-cutter, and in some cases, aren’t completely devoid of growth.
Grace Jones in Vamp
Vamp appeals with an assorted cast of characters. No two are the same, nor are they operating on the same wavelength. The cinematically extroverted AJ, whose actor conveyed charm and vulnerability in near equal amounts, comes alive when he’s at his most undead. Makepeace then makes the chronically cautious Keith a sympathetic fellow, even as he’s more and more affected by the night’s bizarre events. Meanwhile, Duncan is indeed the designated loser of the whole bunch, but Watanabe still manages to humanize him. As a bonus, the role didn’t require him to pull a Long Duk Dong.
As for Dedee Pfeiffer, she is plain adorable as the mysterious After Dark server nicknamed “Amaretto”. She spends all night fixing her dress strap while at the same time trying to get Keith to remember how he knows her. As their offbeat romance grows, it becomes another highlight of this movie. Whether or not Pfeiffer’s character is really a vampire also creates some welcome tension in the story.
Like a lot of its contemporaries, Vamp went on to become a bit of a cult classic. That current status is determined by several factors, but without a doubt, the casting of Grace Jones is the most considerable. The image of her writhing on that unique-looking chair, a Keith Haring original, springs to mind whenever this movie is brought up.
Chris Makepeace, Billy Drago and Paunita Nichols in Vamp
Prior to that first display of unequivocal horror, local vampire queen Katrina (Jones) took to the stage and delivered a strip show like no other. One would expect nothing less from that renowned model and performance artist. By now reports of Jones’ tardiness on set are no secret, yet it’s also hard to deny her commitment to the part of Katrina. It was, in fact, Jones who took charge of her character’s appearance—on top of Haring painting her body and that now-iconic chair, she had Andy Warhol handle her costuming. And not too many actors could seize a room’s attention without saying a single line of dialogue.
In 2022, Vamp received a retrospective novelization from Encyclopocalypse. This literary union of preexisting source material—Wenk’s original screenplay—and new ideas from author Christian Francis amounts to a more comprehensive visit to the After Dark Club. The basic story there is no different than what’s shown on screen; however, Francis gets creative with the characters’ origins and designs, and he enhances a number of key scenes.
The novelization expands on the urban and social decay of the main setting, and supplies a background for the After Dark Club. Sandy Baron’s character, Katrina’s emcee and familiar, is given ample motivation for sticking around; up until the fiery end, he is loyal to his friend and former business partner “Squeak”, who looks like he was “fed through a combine harvester, and left as nothing more than a heap of mangled remains”. Then there is Billy Drago’s character Snow, the leader of a street gang called The Dragons. His reason for menacing Keith and AJ is more altruistic than in the movie; he and his peers act tough to scare off any potential food for the vampires.
Lisa Lyon in Vamp
If not for all the backstories, Francis’ Vamp would be a hell of a lot shorter. Instead, this tie-in read dives into how AJ met Keith—the orphaned Anthony Joseph hailed from a broken home back in Brooklyn—and how their friendship flourished over the years. Keith’s archership is no longer just an assumed part of his entire being; it’s a confidence-building extracurricular for a boy who got picked on before coming into the protection of the new kid in town. These supplemental, in-depth looks at the protagonists, plus their close connection, are maybe unnecessary. The movie already did a fair and concise job of addressing their platonic intimacy without the need for flashbacks and insights, specifically in that scene where AJ lays it all out as he sacrifices himself.
Where the novelization gets off course is its approach to the minor characters. Intermittently backstorying the likes of Katrina’s indentured servants, Seko (Leila Hee Olsen) and Vlad (Brad Logan), ends up disturbing the flow of the writing. Was it absolutely essential that readers know Vlad was the Grand Duke of the House of Romanov, or how Snow’s accomplice Maven (Paunita Nichols) became so dentally challenged? No, not really. However, one’s mileage with these random biographies may vary.
The novelization is a more substantial experience, but for a movie like Vamp, less is more. And as plentiful as they are, it never simply coasts on its campy charms, either. The character work sits comfortably in that realm between cursory and meticulous, the script is sharper than first realized, and Greg Cannom’s vampire makeup is straightforward yet effective. Most of all, the movie didn’t squander its out-of-the-box concept. Richard Wenk made his vision of a “comic nightmare in which just about anything that can go wrong does” come true, and it is very enjoyable.
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